There was a column by Alex Beam in today’s Boston Globe that discusses the legacy of “starchitect,” Paul Rudolph. After graduating Harvard’s prestigious Graduate School of Design, where Rudolph studied under Bauhaus co-founder, Walter Gropius. Rudolph went on to become Dean of the Yale architecture school. His largest project was on the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus, just one of his notable designs, which also include Boston’s Government Service Center.
Rudolph is considered the founder of the Sarasota School of Modernsim, the originator of “Brutalism,” which was signified by use of poured concrete structures. He bridged the early, post-war International Modernist period and the Postmodern period of architecture of the 1960s and beyond.
144 Upland Road is a rare Cambridge Modernist house from the 1950s, custom designed from its humble beginnings as a cinder block garage by Rudolph for George and Violet McClandish. It was on the market May 2014 for $2 million, closing for $2,227,000. The house is located in the highly desirable Avon Hill area of Cambridge, a leafy neighborhood of grand homes in walking distance to almost everything — and a short MBTA ride to the rest. As far as we know, it is only one of two residences built in the Boston area, the other in Newton.
See more photos and links of 144 Upland, about 2/3 of the way down this page at NCModernist.org, where you will also see many more Rudolph projects..
